In The Presence of mine Enemies

IX

When Susanna Weiss listened to the radio in her office, she usually hunted for Mozart or Handel or Haydn or Beethoven or Bach. Verdi or Vivaldi would do in a pinch. The Italians were reckoned frivolous, but they were still allies; you couldn't get in trouble for listening to them.

She sometimes let Wagner blare out into the hallway, too. That was protective coloration, pure and simple, and not only because she despised him as an anti-Semite. No matter how the Nazis had slobbered over him for the past eighty years and more, she couldn't take him seriously.

A lone, lorn woman stands upon a stage trying to make herself heard,an Englishman had written at the start of the twentieth century.One hundred and forty men, all armed with powerful instruments, well-organised, and most of them looking well-fed, combine to make it impossible for a single note of that poor woman's voice to be heard above their din. She'd seen it that way long before she ran into Jerome K. Jerome. Now she couldn't even listen to Wagner without wanting to giggle.

These days, though, less classical music lilted from the radio. She tuned it to the news station more and more often. A lot of what she heard was the same wretched sort of propaganda she'd avoided for years.

A lot of it, but not all. Every so often, startling things came out of the speaker. She listened in the hope of hearing more of them.

Whenever the Fuhrer made a speech, she found herself urging him on, thinking,You can do it. I know you can. And sometimes Heinz Buckliger would, and sometimes he wouldn't. Sometimes he was flat and pedestrian, praising manufacture or agriculture or the Hitler Youth. Then, as she had with too many boyfriends, she decided she'd been fooling herself. She'd been right about the boyfriends. About Buckliger…

The trouble with Buckliger was, he could be astonishing. She was discussing a midterm with a student who had trouble understanding why he'd got only a 73. Susanna knew why-he wasn't too bright and he hadn't studied too hard. However much she wanted to, she couldn't come right out and say that. She had the radio on, not very loud, as she went over the exam with him point by point. It was one of those painful conferences. If the student worked harder, he might get a 76 next time, or even a 78. He would never blossom and get a 92.

Susanna hardly listened to herself as she explained all the myriad ways he'd misunderstood the Old English riddles he'd tried to interpret. More of her attention was on Heinz Buckliger, who was speaking to an audience of German female pharmacists. He'd been blathering on about how pharmacists were vital for the health of the Reich, and how the women's group to which he was speaking had a long history of devoted service. It didn't seem one of his more inspired efforts.

But then, with just a few words, everything changed. Buckliger went on, "We must examine the history of the Reich in the same way: that which is good, and also that which is not so good. We must not flinch from finding and noting our forefathers' failures."

"Fraulein Doktor Professor, I think you should raise my grade because-"

"Wait," Susanna said. The student tried to go on talking. She waved a hand at him. "Hush. I want to hear this." He couldn't very well complain, not when she was listening to the Fuhrer. He still looked…aggrieved. Susanna didn't care.

"Those who complain about the recent emphasis on the first edition of Mein Kampf ignore certain essential facts," Heinz Buckliger went on. "It is perfectly obvious that inadequate representation by the Volk was at the root of past illegalities, arbitrariness, and repression-crimes based on abuse of power."

"Professor Weiss-" The student tried again.

"Hush, I told you," Susanna snapped. The female pharmacists were applauding the Fuhrer, but hesitantly, as if they weren't sure what they were hearing. Susanna was. She just wasn't sure she could believe her ears. What Buckliger was saying was true-was, in fact, a colossal understatement. But that the Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich should say even so much…!

And Buckliger wasn't done. He said, "The responsibility of past National Socialist leaders"-he didn't name Hitler or Himmler, but whom else could he mean? — "and those close to them for undoubted repressions and illegalities is both difficult to forgive and difficult to admit. But we must. Even now, writers try to ignore important questions in our history. They try to pretend nothing out of the ordinary occurred. This is wrong. It neglects historical reality, of which we all must be aware."

He paused for applause. He got…a little. Had Susanna been in the audience, she would have been on her feet whooping and hollering. The student tried to get her to pay attention to his earnest, inept essay again. She silenced him with a glare.

"Everyone's dearest wish," Buckliger went on, "is for the Reich and its ideology to stay unchanging for the thousand years Hitler promised us. But history does not work that way, however much we wish it did. We will either find ways to develop or we will stagnate and fail and go under."

Murmurs said the pharmacists didn't know what to make of the hard truths Buckliger was telling them. And even the Fuhrer seemed to wonder if he'd gone too far. He quickly added, "Fascism has offered to the world its answers to the fundamental questions of human life, at the center of which stands the Volk. The errors we may have made will not, must not, turn us from the path we embarked upon in 1933. We are traveling to the New Order, to the world of the Reich and the Volk. We shall never leave that road."

There, at last, he gave the earnest women who'd come to hear him something they could get their teeth into. They cheered thunderously. Susanna wanted to yawn. The speech continued, but only in banalities.

"Fraulein Doktor Professor-" The student was nothing if not persistent.

"Ja, ja." Susanna realized she would have to get rid of him so she could think. She pointed to the essay. "You do understand that the ostensible answer to this riddle here isa key. That gets you a passing grade. But you don't see all the double meanings hiding underneath. What else might a man have on his hip that could fill a hole if he hiked up his clothes?"

"Excuse me?" The student stared at her as if she'd suddenly started spouting Hindustani. "I'm very sorry, but-" He broke off. She could tell exactly when he did get it. His stare changed from one sort to another altogether. He blushed like a schoolgirl. Prone to such problems herself, Susanna knew a good blush when she saw one. "But…But…" He sputtered, then tried again: "But this…this is atext, Fraulein Doktor Professor!"

"It's a text now," Susanna said. "It's a text to you. But to the man who wrote it, it was a riddle, it was a joke. And if you can't see the joke, well, I'm sorry, but you don't deserve anything more than a bare pass."

He tried to argue some more, but he couldn't, or not very well. He was both demoralized and embarrassed. Had he been a dog, he would have had his tail between his legs as he left her office.

For a wonder, no one else came in right away to complain about the exam. That left Susanna a few minutes to marvel at what she'd just heard. Heinz Buckliger had been careful about what he did. He'd surrounded the meat in his speech with clouds of puffy, obscuring rhetoric. But the meat was there. He'd admitted the Nazi regime had made mistakes. He'd also admitted it had covered them up. And he'd admitted it shouldn't have.

Once he'd done that much, gone that far, what else was left? Only spelling out what the mistakes had been. Would Buckliger have the nerve to do that? Would anyone else, now that the Fuhrer had given permission? Maybe so, if people started to see that telling the truth didn't mean a trip to a camp or a bullet in the back of the neck.

Susanna could hardly wait to find out.

Lise Gimpel was sorting laundry-a labor of Sisyphus if ever there was one-when the girls came home from school. Francesca, for once, didn't start complaining about the Beast right away. She and Roxane went into the kitchen to fix themselves snacks. Roxane opened the refrigerator. "Olives! Yum!" she exclaimed. Her older sisters made disgusted noises. Except for Heinrich, she was the only one in the family who really liked them.

Alicia hunted up Lise instead of getting a snack. She sat down on the bed beside her and said, "We talked about the Fuhrer 's speech in class today."

"Did you?" Lise's mind was still more on socks and underwear than the classroom.

"We sure did." Alicia nodded solemnly. "Did he really say the Reich did things that were wrong, things that were against the law?"

"I think he did," Lise answered. "I can't say for certain, though. I didn't hear the speech."

"Well, suppose he did." Alicia waited till Lise nodded to show she was supposing. Her oldest daughter looked out the bedroom door to make sure Francesca and Roxane couldn't hear, then went on in a low voice, "Does that mean he thinks the Reich was wrong about what it did to Jews?"

"I don't know," Lise said. "What people did to Jews wasn't against the law, though, because they made laws ahead of time that said they could do those things."

"But it was wrong," Alicia said fiercely.

"Oh, yes. It was wrong. I think so just as much as you do. But-" Lise broke off and put both hands on Alicia's shoulders. "The people who run things probably don't think it was wrong. You have to remember that. And even if they say they do think it was wrong, we can't just come out and go, 'Oh, yes, here we are. Now we can get on with our lives again.'"

"Why not?" Plainly, Alicia wanted to do exactly that.

"Because it might be a trap. They might be trying to lure us out so they can get rid of us once and for all. The Nazis have been killing us for almost eighty years. Why should they stop now?"

Alicia bit her lip. She was, after all, only eleven years old. "Would they do such a thing?" she whispered.

"Would they? I don't know," Lise answered. "Could they? You tell me, sweetheart. What do they teach you about Jews in school?"

"Nasty things." Alicia made a face. "Horrible things. You know that."

"Well, yes, I do," Lise said. "I wanted to make sure you did."

"Oh." Alicia thought that over, then nodded. "I'm going to go get a snack before sisters eat everything good in the house." She ran out of the bedroom and started gabbing with Francesca and Roxane. She didn't even tease Roxane about the olives. To her, they weren't part of everything good in the house, and Roxane was welcome to them.

Lise went back to stacking socks and underwear into neat piles, one for each person in the family. She wished there were a laundry fairy to do the job for her, but no such luck. If she didn't do it, nobody would. Heinrich, at least, put away his own clean clothes without being told. The girls…Lise wished for a laundry fairy again.

She also wished she could share Alicia's optimism. She wanted to, maybe more than anything else in all the world. She hated living in hiding, hated fearing a knock on the door that could mean the end not just for her but for everybody she loved. Feeling she carried the weight of the world hadn't been easy when she was a child, and hadn't got any easier now that she'd grown up.

But I do,she thought miserably.We all do, the handful of us who are left. If we let go, if we give up-or if, God forbid, we get caught-a world goes with us.

"Why have you got yipes stripes, Mommy?" There stood Roxane in the doorway, holding an olive impaled on a toothpick.

"Have I?" Lise was sure she did. She tried to make the frown lines leave her forehead. "There. Is that better?"

"A little," Roxane said dubiously.

"How about this?" Lise stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes.

Roxane giggled. That suggested some improvement. But then the youngest Gimpel girl said, "You didn't tell me why you had them in the first place." Her stubborn streak was as wide as she was. It would probably help make her a good Jew when she got old enough to find out she was one. In the meantime…In the meantime, it made her hard to distract.

"Grown-up stuff," Lise answered. "Nothing for you to worry about."Not yet. Not for another few years. And when you do find out, you'll be one more who knows-and one more who can give us away. Letting children know what they were was the hardest part of this secret life. Considering the rest of it, that was no small statement.

Roxane made a face of her own. "What good is being a grownup, if you have to have yipes stripes so much?" She darted away without waiting for an answer.

"What good is being a grownup?" Lise echoed. She thought of the obvious things, the things that appealed to a child-going to bed as late as you wanted to, being able to drive, having all the money you needed, getting out of school forever, not having anybody standing over you waiting to yell "No!" all the time. Then she thought about all the worries that accumulated when you grew up. When you had a family, you worried plenty even if you weren't a Jew. If you were…"What goodis being a grownup?" Lise said again. It was, when you got right down to it, a damned good question.

In the Stahnsdorf train station, Heinrich Gimpel remarked, "Never know what's in the paper these days."

"God knows that's true," Willi Dorsch agreed. "Sometimes you wonder if you want to find out, too."

They threw fifteen pfennigs apiece into the vending machine. Nothing would have stopped them from grabbing two copies of the Volkischer Beobachter when Willi opened the machine to take out his copy. Nothing would have stopped them, but it didn't occur to either man. A man had to do all kinds of things to get along in the Third Reich. That kind of petty the Ft, though, was downright un-German. Willi was a good German. In most ways, so was Heinrich.

The train got there almost as soon as they walked out on the platform. They sat down side by side and started going through the newspaper. Some of the fuss over Heinz Buckliger's speech to the pharmacists was starting to die down. Nobody'd said much in public except Rolf Stolle, the Gauleiter of Berlin, and he'd been all for it. He'd also thundered fearsome warnings about all the Bonzen who hated the very idea of reform. Heinrich thought Stolle at least as much a clown as a politician-with friends like him, who needed enemies? Clown or not, though, he probably hadn't been wrong about the Bonzen.

"Nothing too much today, doesn't look like," Willi said.

"No, I don't see anything very exciting, either." Heinrich tried not to sound too disappointed. People might wonder why he was. If the thaw ended-and he knew too well it could, knew too well it was probably going to-someone might remember. Landing in trouble for being on the wrong side of a political squabble would be just as bad for him (though perhaps not for everyone around him) as landing in trouble for being a Jew. He went on working his way through the Volkischer Beobachter. When he got to page eight, he stopped. "Hello! What's this?"

"What's what?" Willi hadn't got there yet.

"Two men arrested in Copenhagen for carrying an anti-German banner through the streets," Heinrich answered. "They wanted full independence for Denmark."

"Damn fools," Willi said. "Hell, the Danes have it, or close enough. Those idiots don't know when they're well off. They ought to go to Poland or Serbia for a while. That'd teach 'em."

"It sure would." Heinrich hoped that sounded like agreement. The Danes were better off than the Poles or the Serbs or what was left of the Russians and Ukrainians. Like Dutchmen, Norwegians, and Englishmen, Danes got credit for being Aryans. They weren't Slavic Untermenschen. They'd always been pretty peaceful-or at least resigned-under German occupation, too.

But they plainly still remembered they'd been free for hundreds of years before 1940. Heinrich wondered if…Before he could even finish the thought, Willi beat him to it: "They probably listened to the Fuhrer 's speech the other day and figured anything goes from here on out."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Heinrich said. If he had finished the thought, he would have kept quiet about it. Willi, confident about who and what he was, didn't censor himself so severely.

He didn't waste much sympathy on the Danes, either. "They're lucky theydid get arrested, not shot down on the spot. We're softer than we were in Hitler's day. I've told you that before." Then, shifting gears, he went on, "You want to have lunch today?"

"Can't," Heinrich answered. "Our goddaughter's birthday is three days from now, and I've got to find her a present." Anna Stutzman wasn't literally a goddaughter-Jews didn't use that custom-but came close enough. Heinrich couldn't resist asking, "Besides, what about Ilse?"

"I'm not eighteen, for God's sake," Willi said. "I can't do it every day any more. And I've got to save some for Erika. Otherwise, she'd be even crankier than she is."

"Generous of you," Heinrich murmured. He'd intended that for sarcasm. It didn't quite come out that way. Willi had his own inimitable style, but at least part of his heart seemed to be in the right place.

He grinned now. "Isn't it?" he said complacently. The train rattled on toward South Station in Berlin.

When lunchtime came, Heinrich hopped a cab up to the Kurfurstendamm. He knew-he had detailed instructions from Lise-what he was supposed to get for Anna. Like everyone else who was breathing and halfway conscious, he'd seen advertisements for the Vicki dolls imported from the United States. They had flaxen hair, vacant expressions, improbable figures, and clothes Mata Hari would have envied. They looked perfectly Aryan. Maybe that was why they were so wildly popular in the Reich. Or maybe not-you never could tell with kids. With three of his own, Heinrich knew that.

At least people weren't fighting hand to hand these days, the way they had been when the dolls first came out. Heinrich had asked Lise if she was sure he wasn't getting something passe for Anna. She'd shaken her head. "I checked with our girls," she'd answered. "They're still popular. With all the different outfits you can get for them, they'll stay that way for years." If the girls said it, it had to be true.

Heinrich did wonder who made clothes for the swarms of Vickis. They weren't that expensive, and they didn't come from the Empire of Japan with its ocean of cheap labor. Did the doll manufacturer know an official who could pull seamstresses out of a prison camp? — or maybe not pull them out of a camp, but make them work inside? They'd sew as if their lives depended on it. Their lives would, too.

He grimaced. You could ask that kind of question about a lot of things you saw every day. Sometimes-usually-not knowing was better. He shook his head. That wasn't right. You needed to know. Heinz Buckliger was dead on target there. But ignorance could be easier for your peace of mind.

Ducking into Ulbricht's toy store banished such gloomy reflections. If you couldn't be happy in Ulbricht's, you were probably dead. Dolls, stuffed animals, brightly colored children's books, football and basketball and archery sets, toy soldiers and sailors and panzers and U-boats and fighter planes (Landser Sepp was the counterpart of Vicki for boys, and came with enough materiel to conquer Belgium), all waited for your money. Loud, cheerful music made you want to smile-and to part with your Reichsmarks.

There. He'd been told to get that one: a New Orleans Vicki, dressed in lace and satin and looking as if she'd just stepped out of Gone with the Wind. (That had been one of Hitler's favorite movies. It still got rereleased every few years. Susanna loved to go to it and make fun of the dubbing.) Heinrich grabbed for the package.

A woman's hand closed on it at the same time as his.

Annoyed, he looked up from the doll to see who else wanted it-only to discover Erika Dorsch, also annoyed, also looking up from the doll for what had to be the same reason. They stared at each other and started to laugh. "For my sister Leonore's girl," Erika said.

"For my goddaughter," Heinrich said. "Is there another one like it in the bin?"

"Let's see." Erika had to dig a little, but she found one. She handed it to him. "Here."

"Oh, good," he said. "Now we won't have to go to court, the way those two women did a few months ago when the craze was at its craziest. The judge should have played Solomon and cut the doll in half, if you ask me."

"Ja." Erika cocked her head to one side, studying him. "If we're not going to court, whereshall we go?"

"I was going to pay for this and head back to the office," Heinrich answered. "It's been busy."

"It can't bethat busy, if dear Willi takes Ilse out so often," Erika said. "And shouldn't you pay him back for the extra work you get stuck with when he does?"

Pay him back how?Heinrich wondered. He was afraid Erika would tell him-or show him. He had to be afraid of so many things. That this should be one of them struck him as most unfair. "It's not so bad," he said.

That didn't satisfy Erika, either. He might have known it wouldn't. "You're too easygoing for your own good," she said. "You let people push you around, do things to you-everybody but me."

"Ha," Heinrich said in a distinctly hollow voice. "Ha, ha. What would you do to me?"

She kissed him, right there in front of the bin of Vicki dolls. She made a good, thorough job of it, too. Behind Heinrich, somebody coughed. His ears felt ready to catch fire. But so did the rest of him, in a different way. The only way he could have kept from kissing her back and tightening his arms around her was to die on the spot.

"There," she said, breaking the kiss as abruptly as she'd started it. "See you later. Enjoy your work." She went off toward a cashier, that New Orleans Vicki still in her hand.

Heinrich stared after her. A man with a white Hitler mustache-probably a grandfather shopping for a grand-daughter-winked at him. "You lucky dog. If Ulbricht's sold dolls like that, I'd buy myself one in a minute," he said, and cackled at his own wit like a laying hen.

"Lucky. Right," Heinrich said dazedly. The old man thought that was pretty funny, too. Still cackling, he went on toward a display of stuffed kittens.

Heinrich fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. He rubbed at his mouth. He could still taste the sweetness of Erika's lipstick-and of her lips. The handkerchief came away stained the same bright pink Erika had been wearing. To make sure he'd got it all, Heinrich went into a men's room and checked in the mirror. A good thing he did, too-he'd missed a large, incriminating spot. A few more dabs got rid of it.

He started out of the men's room, then stopped. The stained handkerchief went into the wastebin full of crumpled paper towels. Explaining how he'd lost it-a blank look and "I don't know"-would be easier than telling Lise how it had got those telltale stains on it. Anything would be easier than that.

He paid for the Vicki and went out onto the Kurfurstendamm to flag a cab for the ride back to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters. A taxi pulled up. The driver hopped out and opened the rear door for him. "Here you go, sir," he said.

"Thanks." Heinrich slid in. The cabby zoomed away from the curb. Heinrich looked down at the Ulbricht's sack on his knees. He'd paid for the doll, all right.

Alicia Gimpel peered out the window. "Here she comes," she hissed suddenly, and ducked back out of sight like a sniper who had to stay hidden to stay alive. She waved importantly to the other girls gathered in the living room. "Quiet, everybody!"

She needed to say it three times before they paid any attention to her. They finally did, just when Anna Stutzman and her mother came up the walk toward the front door. Anna's mother rang the bell. Alicia and her mother answered it. Francesca and Roxane stood behind them in the entrance hall. That was all right. Anna could see Alicia's little sisters. They lived here, after all. And it was quiet-pretty quiet, anyhow-in the living room.

"Hello, there," Alicia's mother said, opening the door. "How are you today? Heavens, Anna, you're getting so big!"

"I'm barely keeping up with Alicia," Anna said. That was true, but Alicia showed signs that she would be very tall when she grew up. Anna didn't.

"What does being twelve feel like?" Alicia asked after they hugged.

"Like being eleven, but one more," Anna answered. They both laughed. Alicia hadn't found out what being eleven was like till a few weeks before.

"Come in, come in, come in," her mother said. Alicia thought Francesca and Roxane would ruin things then, because they made some of the most ridiculous faces she'd ever seen. But Anna didn't seem to notice anything wrong. Maybe she thought Alicia's sisters were always ridiculous. Alicia often did.

Francesca and Roxane raced back into the living room. That should have been a giveaway, too, but somehow it wasn't. Alicia and Anna and their mothers followed more slowly. Anna was saying, "Have you seen the new singers in the-"

"Surprise!" yelled a dozen girls. "Surprise!" Alicia echoed, grinning from ear to ear. It had worked! In spite of everything, it had worked.

The look on Anna's face was worth a hundred Reichsmarks. "You didn't!" she said to Alicia. "I'll get you for this."

"I did, too," Alicia answered, and the other didn't bother her one bit.

Anna rounded on her mother. "You must have known," she accused.

"Who, me?" Frau Stutzman said. That made everybody laugh again.

Before long, it stopped being a surprise party and just turned into a birthday party. Alicia didn't know all of Anna's friends very well. Some of them lived near Anna, while others were in her class at school. They seemed nice enough. They put up with Alicia's little sisters. Some of them would have little sisters or brothers of their own. Alicia would have got mad if they'd teased Francesca or Roxane. That washer job. As far as she could tell, none of the other girls shared the secret she and Anna did. That made the two of them special-or she thought it did, anyhow. How could she know for sure? She couldn't.

It also made Francesca and Roxane special. They didn't know it yet, though, and they wouldn't be too happy when they found out. Alicia shook her head. This whole business still seemed very strange.

But then, in the midst of games and songs and cake and ice cream and "genuine American hot dogs" from a stand that had opened up a few blocks away (they tasted like any other frankfurters to Alicia), she forgot all about the secret. When she'd first learned it, she hadn't thought she would ever be able to do that.

Anna unwrapped her presents. She squealed extra loud when she opened the New Orleans Vicki. Several of the other girls made envious noises. Alicia felt especially good because of that. She wanted to give Anna a really nice present.

More cake and ice cream followed. "You're going to make them sick,"Frau Stutzman told Alicia's mom. She didn't sound as if she meant it, though. Not too much later, she went home, saying, "I'll see you in the morning, Anna. Happy birthday, sweetie."

The guests ran around and sang more songs and played games and fooled around with the Gimpel girls' dolls and toys. When it got late, they spread out sleeping bags on the floor of the front room. Nobody who'd ever gone on a Bund deutscher Madel outing was without a sleeping bag. Francesca and Roxane had theirs, too, even though they weren't old enough to join the organization for German girls.

They might have got into the sleeping bags. The lights might have been out. They weren't going to fall asleep any time soon, though. Alicia's father made a brief appearance, coming halfway down the stairs. "Try to keep it down to a low roar, if you please," he said. He sounded as if he knew that was a lost hope.

They giggled. They gossiped. They told scary stories, which seemed even scarier in the dark. One of Anna's friends had read a translation of "The Telltale Heart." That was good for plenty of goose bumps.

Roxane started to doze. Every so often, she'd say, "I'm awake," in a small, faraway voice. She was still little, even if she would have indignantly denied it.

One by one, the girls did drop off to sleep. Snores replaced Roxane's protests. A couple of the girls Anna's age were snoring by the time Francesca gave in and slept. Alicia wasn't surprised. She knew how stubborn Francesca was.

By two in the morning, snores and deep breathing filled the Gimpels' living room. Alicia's sleeping bag lay next to Anna's. Not only were they best friends, but the party was in Alicia's house. She doubly had the right to be there. Her voice a tiny whisper, she asked, "Are you still awake?"

"No," Anna whispered back, and they both laughed.

"Did you have a happy birthday?" Alicia asked.

Anna nodded. Alicia could barely see the motion. "I'll say," Anna answered.

"Good. I'm glad," Alicia said, and then, "How are…things?"

"Things are all right with me." Anna poked her head up to make sure nobody else was awake and listening. Alicia did the same. She'd been sure Anna would know how she meantthings, and she'd been right. Her friend even used the same word and the same little pause to ask, "How are…things with you?"

"They're not too bad, I guess." But Alicia couldn't leave it at that. She went on, "I think it's harder when other people in the house don't know." She stuck her head up and listened again. This would be a very bad time to find out Francesca was only pretending to sleep.

"I believe that," Anna said. Now she paused before continuing, "Gottlieb told me the same thing once. I was really little when he found out. I was younger than Roxane." She laughed at the follies of her youth. "He must have wanted to kick me a whole bunch of times."

Alicia had wanted to kick her sisters plenty of times. The trouble was, they kicked back. The other trouble was…"It's what you learn in school. It's what you see on the televisor. It's-it's just everything, that's all. I believed all that stuff till I found out." In a tinier voice yet, she added, "Part of me still wants to believe it."

"Oh, thank you!" Anna said. Alicia blinked. Anna explained: "I was afraid I was the only one who thought things like that." They both came halfway out of their sleeping bags so they could hug each other.

Not once, Alicia realized, had either one of them said the word Jew. Even if one of the other girls were listening, she wouldn't know what they were talking about. They were both so very careful. They had to be. If they weren't careful, they were dead. Alicia had known that was what happened to Jews long before she knew she was one.

Anna asked her, "What do you think of the new Fuhrer? "

"I was going to ask you the same thing!" Alicia exclaimed. She liked it when she and Anna thought the same way. Nobody else thought like her, except her father every once in a while. Since Anna had asked the question first, she had to answer it: "He seems…better, anyhow."

"He does, doesn't he?" Anna said. "He talks about how there ought to be laws, not just…the triumph of the will." They'd both seen the film. Everybody saw it, in school and on the televisor. It was old. You could tell when you watched it. But it had a kick like a mule even so.

"You know the lady who made that movie?" Alicia asked. Anna nodded. Alicia said, "She died just a few years ago. She was over a hundred-even older than Kurt Haldweim." She shivered, remembering how she'd filed past the late Fuhrer 's shrunken, wizened corpse as it lay in state in the Great Hall.

"That's scary," Anna said. Now Alicia nodded. Anna went on, "When your sisters…talk about things they don't know about, how do you stand it?"

"I don't know," Alicia answered. "Just after I first found out, it really used to drive me crazy. Now it doesn't, or not so much, anyway. They don't know any better, and they can't for a while. They're too little."

"That's funny," Anna said. Alicia made a soft, inquiring noise. Her friend went on, "Gottlieb said almost the same thing to me-almost the same thing about me-after I finally did find out what was what." The last few words came out muffled by a yawn.

Alicia yawned, too. They were both up long past their usual bedtime. Of course, that was what slumber parties were for. Alicia's head went down. "I think I am going to sleep now," she said. "Happy birthday again."

"It was the happiest!" Anna said. In a couple of minutes, both of them were snoring with the other girls.

Something peculiar was happening in Adolf Hitler Platz when Heinrich Gimpel and Willi Dorsch got off the bus from South Station. Heinrich asked, "What's going on?" He had trouble seeing, not only because of the mist and light drizzle themselves but because of the way they spattered his glasses.

"Looks like…" Willi brought up his hand. Heinrich wondered why. His friend didn't wear glasses. Maybe the hand helped the visor on his cap keep water out of his eyes. Maybe he just thought the gesture looked impressive. After peering, he said, "I will be damned. Looks like some Dutchmen are holding a demonstration over there."

"Dutchmen?" Heinrich echoed. Then, between raindrops, he too got a glimpse of the red, white, and blue flag with the stripes laid out horizontally, not vertically as in the French tricolor. A couple of dozen men and women huddled beneath the damp banner. A few of them carried signs. Distance and rain kept Heinrich from making out the words. He would have had to do some guessing, anyway; Dutch had a teasing almost-familiarity to someone who spoke German and English.

"Vrijheid!" the Dutch shouted. Heinrich didn't have to do much guessing to figure out what that meant. It was very close to Freiheit, the German word for freedom."Vrijheid!"

Willi got it, too. "Where are the Security Police?" he demanded.

"Here they come." If Heinrich was dismayed-and he was-he didn't show it.

"About time," Willi said, which showed what he thought.

The men in black tunics and trousers trotted briskly across the square. They carried truncheons and pistols; a couple of them had assault rifles. Would it be arrests or a massacre? Lights blazing and sirens howling, police wagons followed the troopers. It turned out to be arrests. The Dutchmen and — women didn't try to flee. They kept calling,"Vrijheit!" as the Security Police herded them into the wagons, which screeched away. Adolf Hitler Platz was quiet again. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than three minutes.

"They must have been out of their minds," Willi said. "They don't have the faintest idea when they've got it good. Bunch of damned fools, like those Danes. Give 'em a little, treat 'em halfway decent because they're Aryans, and what do they do? Do they thank you? Hell, no! They grab with both hands, that's what."

"Maybe they're taking the new Fuhrer seriously," Heinrich said as he and Willi went up the stairs to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters.

Willi gave him an odd look. "Maybe they're taking Buckligertoo seriously," he said. "What'll we see next? Poles shouting for freedom? Russians? Jews?" He threw back his head and laughed.

So did Heinrich. The idea was, when you got down to it, pretty funny. He tried to imagine some of the handful of surviving Jews in Berlin getting out there in the middle of that enormous square and clamoring for their freedom. Would the Security Police even need to come? Or would ordinary people beat and stone them to death before the men in black uniforms got there? Everyone here, or as near as made no difference, had that same casual loathing for Jews.

"Do you think…" Willi sounded as if he'd decided to take Heinrich seriously after all instead of laughing at him. "Do you think Buckligerintends for things like this to happen?"

Heinrich didn't even try to answer that till the security guards had checked their identification cards and waved them through into the building. Then he said, "I doubt it. Who would? But how can you make changes in the way things work if you can't even talk about changes without getting arrested?"

"Oh, come on," Willi said. "These were Dutchmen. The others were a bunch of crazy Danes. You didn't see any real Germans out there, did you?"

"Not a one," Heinrich agreed. He wondered if he ever would. The Party had spent the last three generations teaching the Germans to be docile to their rulers, no matter how ferocious they were when they put on uniforms and marched off to war. Could they nerve themselves to speak their minds? After three generations of Nazi propaganda, did they have any minds to speak? He wasn't an optimist. On a question like that, he couldn't afford optimism. The cost of being wrong was too high.

"Coffee!" Willi exclaimed when they got to the room where they worked. He disappeared, presumably heading for the canteen, and came back five minutes later with a foam cup from which fragrant steam rose. He gulped it down, then sighed blissfully. "Ahhh!"

Heinrich wanted a cup, too. Even so, he said, "I've seen drunks who didn't cozy up to a bottle of cheap schnapps the way you did with that coffee."

"If you're going to enjoy something, you shouldenjoy it, shouldn't you?" Willi said. "Why only go halfway?"

"Because sometimes all the way is too far?" Heinrich suggested. Willi laughed at him again. It wasn't surprising that he should. National Socialist ideology scorned the idea of restraint. It always had. Heinrich wondered if Heinz Buckliger could change that, or if it had even occurred to the new Fuhrer to try. He had his doubts.

He also had his work. He got some coffee for himself. With it unmelodramatically sitting there on the desk in front of him, he got down to business. Sure enough, with their assessments reduced, the Americans were paying even less than they had been. They were trying to see just how much the Reich would let them get away with before it clamped down. If he hadn't already been sure they would do that, it would have infuriated him.

The coffee hadn't had time to get cold before the telephone rang. He picked it up. "Analysis section, Heinrich Gimpel speaking."

"Guten Morgen, Herr Gimpel," an American-accented voice said. "Charlie Cox here.Wie geht's mit Ihnen? "

"I'm fine, thanks," Heinrich answered automatically. Then he blinked. "It's not morning where you are, Herr Cox. It's still the middle of last night. Are you up early or up late?"

"Late," Cox said easily. "I wanted to ask you something unofficial."

"Well, go ahead," Heinrich told him. "Of course, an answer to a question like that is worth its weight in gold."

"Aber naturlich,"Cox said. He knew the answer wouldn't really be unofficial, then. By the nature of things, it couldn't be. That meant the "unofficial" question wasn't, either. Cox proceeded to ask it: "Just exactly how serious is Herr Buckliger about reforming the National Socialist system?"

"That's a good question," Heinrich said. He could see why the American and his leaders wanted to find out. A lot of other people in the Germanic Empire and in the Greater German Reich wanted to find out, too. Heinrich wouldn't have been surprised if Heinz Buckliger were one of them. He went on, "The only thing I can tell you, though, is that I don't know."

"Unofficially, dammit." Charlie Cox sounded annoyed.

You idiot. Don't you think there's a bug on this phone? Someone will be listening to you-and to me-if not right this second, then when he plays a tape. Aloud, Heinrich replied, "Official or unofficial, you'd get the same answer from me. Come on, Charlie. Use your head."You'd better. "I'm not at the level that makes policy. All I do is carry it out."

"the Fuhrer talks to you," Cox said.

So that news had got across the Atlantic, had it? Either it had spread more widely than Heinrich thought or the Americans had better spies than Intelligence gave them credit for. That wasn't Heinrich's immediate worry, though. He said, "For heaven's sake, he just asked me for a few figures sohe could set policy. That's what the Fuhrerprinzip is all about."

"Ja,"Cox agreed. "But if he likes the first edition as much as he says he does, how much does he care about the Fuhrerprinzip? "

A lot of people in the Empire and in the Reich were also wondering about that. "I'm very sorry," Heinrich said, "but I still don't know. If you want advice-"

"I'll take whatever you give me," the American broke in. "You've always seemed like a decent fellow."

Are you naive enough to assume that about anyone in the Reich,or do you think I'm naive enough to be flattered? In a way, Heinrichwas flattered, but not in a way that would do Cox any good. He said, "The only real advice I can give you is, wait and see. What the Fuhrer does will show you exactly what he has in mind."

"I was hoping for a little advance warning." But he must have realized he wouldn't get it from Heinrich. With what might have been either a sigh or a yawn, he said, "All right. I'm going on home to bed. Thanks for your time,Herr Gimpel." He hung up.

So did Heinrich, with quite unnecessary force. Willi said, "Sounded like somebody was trying to get something out of you."

"An American," Heinrich said. "I think I'd better write up a report." If he did, the people surely monitoring the line would have less reason to read disloyalty into anything he'd said. As he began to type, though, he wondered how much good it would do. If the powers that be decided he was disloyal, they wouldn't worry about evidence. They'd invent some or do without and just get rid of him.

Will they, under this Fuhrer?That Heinrich could wonder said how much things had changed-and how much they hadn't.

Walther Stutzman was a straight-thinking, rational man. He had to be, to make himself a success at the Zeiss computer works. Every so often, though, he found himself bemused by what he and a few others did-had to do-to keep themselves hidden from the all-too-nearly omniscient eye of the state.

Hitler had thundered that there was a Jewish conspiracy against the German Volk, against the Reich. At the time, he'd been talking through his hat. The Jews hadn't been plotting against Germany. Most of the Jewsin Germany had thought of themselves as being as German as anybody else. Now, on the other hand…

Now the handful of Jews remaining in Berlin, in Germany as a whole, had to conspire against the Reich if they wanted to go on breathing. Hitler's extermination camps had had the ironic effect of calling into being what hadn't existed when he started making speeches. Even now, it wasn't the sort of conspiracy he meant. It didn't aim to take over the Reich, just to hide the few surviving Jews from it. But a conspiracy it undoubtedly was.

Here sat Walther, controlling computer codes that would have earned him a bullet in the back of the neck if anyone knew he had them. Some of the codes erased his tracks after he'd used others, which made discovering him harder. Over at Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Heinrich Gimpel kept his ear to the ground. There was a Jew in a fairly high place in the Foreign Ministry. There were even three or four in the SS. Walther had helped create false pedigrees for a couple of them. The others he just knew about; he wasn't sure how they'd established their bona fides. His own work there still worried him. If it unraveled, so much was liable to unravel with it. Several other important ministries also held a Jew or two.

When a Jew in one place heard something that might be important, others soon found out about it. A chief undersecretary or a deputy assistant minister could meet with a friend at dinner or telephone a colleague in another ministry-sometimes not a Jew himself, but someone who could be expected to spread the news to the Jew who needed to know it. Heinrich said the American phrase was a grapevine. That fit well enough.

And that chief undersecretary or deputy assistant minister sometimes got to propose a policy that-purely by chance, of course (of course!)-made things a little easier, a little safer, for the Jews. Or, bureaucracy being what it was, one of those functionaries could sometimes ignore or soften a directive that might have hurt his people. Very often, one bad scheme blocked was worth three good ones started.

A Jewish conspiracy at the heart of the Reich. Hitler would have had kittens. He would have ordered all the Jews killed, and made horrible examples of the Germans who'd missed them. Walther thought of knives and piano-wire nooses. Himmler would have killed the Jews and made examples of some Germans, too, but he would have got rid of them more humanely. Kurt Haldweim would have got rid of the Jews and reprimanded, maybe demoted, the Germans.

Heinz Buckliger? Walther scratched his head. He didn't know. He didn't dare find out. Who would dare, when the consequences for being wrong were so irrevocable? For the first time in his life, though, he could think of the Fuhrer without a shudder right afterwards.

"Hey, Walther! What are you doing in there?"

The booming voice jerked him out of his reverie. "Nothing much, boss," he answered honestly, hiding a start, too. "Just woolgathering, I'm afraid."

"You?" Gustav Priepke boomed laughter. "That'll be the day. Listen, something's come up, and I need you to take a shot at it."

Walther had told the truth, and Priepke hadn't believed him. That was what he got for having a reputation for working hard. If he'd had a name for doing nothing, he could have been working on six things at once and his boss wouldn't have believed that, either. He did his best to look bright and attentive, even if he didn't feel that way. "What is it?" he asked.

"The new operating system-what else?" Priepke answered. "We've got to make it work, or else." He didn't say or else what, but he didn't have to. The project was long overdue. That it was so long overdue made it harder, too.

"Well, there is one obvious answer we haven't tried yet," Walther said.

"What's that?" his boss asked. "I thought we'd done all the obvious things."

Walther shook his head. "No, there's one thing we haven't done that could save us a lot of time." Priepke let out an interrogative grunt. Walther said, "We could see how much Japanese code we can steal or adapt."

"Donnerwetter!" Gustav Priepke looked at him as if he'd suggested turning every Ratskeller in the Reich into a sushi bar. "What a bastardly idea! What the Japs know about real programming-"

"Is just what we need right now," Walther broke in.

"Jesus Christ!" Priepke said harshly. "You know what Hitler said about the Japs in Mein Kampf. If they didn't have Aryans to steal ideas from, their culture would freeze solid again likethat." He snapped his fingers.

"Do you want to talk about politics or computers?" Walther asked. "I don't care about politics. I don't care at all. What I care about are computers. The Japanese have some ideas we can use, and I think we can extract them without too much trouble. Which counts for more, ideology or the operating system?"

"You wouldn't have dared talk like that in Himmler's time, let alone Hitler's."

"Oh, yes, I would," Walther said. "The Russians had a terrific panzer in the Second World War. The T-34 was better than anything we brought against it, but we had better crews, so we won. Our next panzer, the Panther, borrowed-stole-all sorts of ideas from the T-34. The designers didn't care who built it. All they cared about was that it was a good machine."

His boss grunted again, this time meditatively. Then he said, "What if the code's got traps in it?"

"If we can't find them, are we really smarter than the Japanese?" Walther asked.

One more grunt. Priepke said, "I can't decide that on my own. I don't want the Security Police landing on us with both feet half an hour after we start." He stormed away from Walther's cubicle.

Walther wondered whether he should have kept his mouth shut. Would the Security Police start asking him nasty questions now? All he'd wanted was to do the job the people set over him told him to do. Was that too much to hope for? Maybe it was.No good deed goes unpunished, he thought sourly.

Gustav Priepke didn't come back for more than an hour. That worried Walther, too. Had he got his boss in trouble? Or was the trouble waiting forhim instead? He relaxed-a little-when Priepke did return. The big, burly man gave him a comic-opera Oriental bow. "Velly good. We tly that," he said in what he imagined was Japanese-accented German.

Walther made a face. "I wish I'd never suggested it," he said. Priepke laughed. He thought Walther was kidding, as he'd been. Walther knew too well he wasn't.

A chilly wind blew through Stahnsdorf. Rain was coming, but it hadn't got there yet. Inside the Gimpels' house, everything was warm and cozy. Heinrich moved at his wife's direction, putting this away and dusting that. He didn't move fast enough to suit her. "What's the matter?" she asked. "The Dorsches haven't been over in a while. Don't you feel like playing bridge?"

"It's not that," Heinrich said, and it wasn't. He was always ready to play bridge.

"What is it, then?" Before Lise went on, she looked around to make sure the girls were out of earshot. "Erika making you nervous?"

"Ha," he said in a hollow voice. Erika damn well did make him nervous. He hadn't said a word about running into her at Ulbricht's. He still didn't know what to think about that. The doorbell rang. He wasn't going to get a chance to decide now.

Lise was closer, so she opened the door. They all hugged and said hello and asked about children and said how glad they were to see one another. With a flourish, Willi handed Lise his usual offering of a bottle of wine. "Open it now," he said. "When we make mistakes at the bridge table, we always need something to blame them on."

Erika opened her mouth. Heinrich knew exactly what she was going to say. He didn't feel like having the sniping start before the Dorsches even got out of the front hall. Since he didn't, he forestalled her, asking, "How are-things?"

They could take that any way they wanted. Willi took it the way Heinrich had intended. He waggled his palm back and forth. "So-so," he said. "We have our ups and downs." Never one to leave a setup line alone, he finished, "Maybe not as often as when I was twenty-two, but we manage."

You'd manage more if it weren't for Ilse. Even you know that. Heinrich didn't say it. He did wonder whether Erika would, and how he could deflect her if she started to. Fortunately, she kept quiet. Heinrich wouldn't have wanted to be on the receiving end of the look she sent Willi, though.

"Let me go open the wine," Lise said. "Why doesn't everybody else sit down?"

Willi dealt the first hand. "And now to give myself thirteen diamonds," he said grandly.

"As long as you give me thirteen hearts, I don't mind," Heinrich said.

Reality returned as soon as he picked up his hand, which showed the usual mixture of suits and ten points. Willi opened with a club. Heinrich passed. Erika said, "Two clubs," which meant she had some support for Willi but not a great deal. He took it to three, after which everybody passed. And he made three clubs with no overtricks but without much trouble.

"A leg," he said as Erika wrote their sixty points under the line.

Heinrich gathered up the cards and started shuffling. "The only thing legs are good for is getting chopped off," he observed. He dealt out the next hand and opened with a spade. After a lively auction, he and Lise got to four spades. Willi doubled. If they made it, they would take the game and wipe out the Dorsches' partial score. If they went down, it would get expensive above the line.

Erika led a heart; Willi had been bidding them. When Lise laid out the dummy, Heinrich got an unpleasant surprise. He had the ace, queen, ten, and nine of spades, plus a little one. His wife had four little spades to the eight. That left the king and jack conspicuously missing, along with two little ones to protect them. Considering the other problems he had in the hand, it also left him in trouble.

Willi took the trick with the king of hearts, then led the ace. When that went through without getting trumped, he grinned at Heinrich and said, "Got you."

"Maybe." Heinrich shrugged. He thought Willi had him, too, but he was damned if he'd admit it.

"No maybes about it." Willi led a diamond. That wasn't the way to finish Heinrich off. He had the ace in his hand, while the king was on the board. He decided he would rather be in the dummy, so he took the trick with the king. Then he led a small spade from the dummy. Willi played another one. Heinrich hesitated, but only for a moment. He set down the ten. Behind the cards of the dummy, Lise blinked.

He felt like shouting when Erika sluffed a club. That meant Willi had all the opposition's spades. No wonder he'd doubled. But it also meant…Happily, Heinrich said, "I'm going to finesse you right out of your shoes."

Willi looked revolted. Heinrich didn't blame him a bit. Had he been sitting in that chair instead of this one, he would have been revolted, too. And he had plenty of board entries, so he could get back to the dummy whenever he needed to. He pulled Willi's trumps, one by one; Willi couldn't make any of them good. And he made the contract-doubled.

"A deep finesse," Willi said mournfully. "Who would have thoughtyou would run a deep finesse? And who would have thought it would work?"

"I had to," Heinrich answered. "It was the only way I even had a chance to make four. So I thought, why not?"

"That's the way to do it," Erika said. "If you've got one chance-take it." She looked right at him as she said that. He passed her the cards in a hurry. He knew too well she wasn't talking about bridge.

In spite of that hand, she and Willi won the rubber. They didn't win by as much as they would have if Willi hadn't doubled. Erika let Willi hear about that when it was over. He gave her a dirty look. "We won," he said. "Quit complaining."

If that wasn't calculated to annoy her, it certainly did the job. The only way Heinrich found to make them stop bickering was to bring out a fresh bottle of wine, a fancy burgundy. It made Willi wonder aloud whether he'd robbed a bank or started taking kickbacks from the Americans. Heinrich didn't care. If Willi was teasing him, he wasn't throwing darts at Erika. When he wasn't, he was good company-and so was she. Of course, the more they drank, the less they were liable to care what they said. Heinrich knew he might only be putting off trouble. If he didn't put it off, though, he already had it inside the door.

He and Lise won the next rubber. All the hands were cut and dried. Nobody could complain about anyone's play. That relieved Heinrich. How fast the bottle of burgundy emptied didn't, especially since

Willi and Erika drank more of it than Lise and he did. He didn't begrudge them the wine. But he feared it wouldn't just bein vino veritas. In vino calamitas seemed much more likely.

The third rubber also went well enough. Erika and Willi won it as smoothly and as competently as he and Lise had taken the second. Heinrich's only bad moment came when Erika started loudly praising the first edition of Mein Kampf. But he could even cautiously agree with her. She couldn't be far wrong if the Fuhrer was saying the same thing.

Because the first three rubbers had gone briskly, they decided to play another one. Lise, who drank the least of the four of them, broke out another bottle of wine. However much Heinrich wanted to, he couldn't yell,My God, what are you doing? Since he couldn't, he waited numbly-quite numbly, since he'd had a good bit himself-to see what happened next.

What happened next was that Willi went down three on a hand he should have been able to make with his eyes closed. Considering the way he played it, he might have had them closed all through it. When it was finally over, he looked at his tricks and the defenders' like a man contemplating a traffic accident he'd caused. "Well," he said in tones of rueful surprise, "thatdidn't work."

"I'll tell you why it didn't work, too," Erika said. "It didn't work because you're an idiot."

"I don't know what I could have-" Willi began.

She told him. She told him in great detail. And she was quite obviously right. Then she said, "If you can't hit the target any better with Ilse, she's got an-"

Heinrich and Lise both said something, anything, to keep Erika from finishing that sentence. Afterwards, Heinrich never could remember what had burst from his lips, or from his wife's. Erikadidn't finish, either: a triumph of sorts. But only of sorts, for enough of the damage was already done. Willi went a hot crimson color; his skin might have belonged to a perfectly ripe apple.

"You've got a lot of damned nerve complaining about me," he said, his voice low and rough and furious. "You're the one who wants to-"

"Enough!" That wasn't Heinrich but Lise. She rarely raised her voice. When she did, as now, surprise made everyone pay attention to her. She went on, "There's a time and a place for everything, and this isn't the time and the place for that."

The Dorsches could easily have erupted. If they had, the friendship probably would have exploded right there at the bridge table. Heinrich waited. The shrapnel from that explosion would tear into him, not into his wife. But it didn't come. Erika and Willi kept on glaring at each other, but neither one of them said anything new and inflammatory.

After a long, long moment, Erika turned to Lise and said, "You make good sense. I see where Heinrich gets it."

"Oh,Quatsch, " Lise said. "Now I have to figure out which one of us you just insulted." She gathered up the cards. "In the meantime, can we play some bridge? Hitting each other over the head with rocks is a different game, and it shouldn't be a spectator sport."

"What do you know about it?" Willi asked, half blustering, half amused. "You and Heinrich never do it."

She and Heinrich both laughed raucously. Heinrich knew their marriage had its creaks and strains, as what marriage does not? He could put his finger on four or five without even thinking. No doubt Lise could do the same. And no doubt some of his wouldn't be the same as some of hers, which was in itself a strain. But none of that was anybody's business but his and Lise's.

That thought led him to the next one: "We just try not to do it when other people are watching."

"Oh, but having other people watch is half the fun," Willi said. Erika nodded. There, for once, she agreed with her husband.

Heinrich, on the other hand, did his best to hide a shudder. Little green men from Mars could have had no more alien an attitude. Put your life on display, as if you were characters on a daytime televisor drama? He couldn't imagine living like that. One of the reasons he and Lise got on so well was that she was as intensely private a person as he was.

"Whose deal is it, anyhow?" Willi asked, as easily as if he and Erika hadn't been shelling each other a couple of minutes before. "Let's see if I can butcher another one, eh?" Erika stirred. Suddenly, she jerked in surprise. Had Lise kicked her under the table? Heinrich had trouble imagining his wife doing such a thing. He also had trouble finding any other reason Erika would have jerked like that.

Willi did win the contract, at three diamonds. He made it. Heinrich hadn't been sure he would, but he did. If anything, that left Heinrich relieved. He wasn't used to rooting for the opposition. He didn't much like it. It took the competitive edge off the bridge.

The Dorsches won the rubber. Again, Heinrich wasn't sorry, and wished he were. Usually, they would have talked and drunk for a while after they set down the cards-or maybe they just would have played some more. Tonight, Willi and Erika got up and left with only the most perfunctory good-byes. Heinrich and Lise didn't ask them to stay longer, even in the most perfunctory way.

"Are we going to be able to have them over any more, or to go to their place?" Lise asked once they'd gone. "The bridge is all very well, but some things are more trouble than they're worth."

"Yes, I know," Heinrich said. He also feared he knew what Willi had been about to say when Lise forestalled him. After Erika jabbed him about Ilse, he would have jabbed her about making a play for Heinrich. If things had been bad, had been ugly, before then, how much worse and uglier would they have got afterwards?

Heinrich was a man who thought in quantitative terms. If he couldn't put numbers to something, it didn't feel real to him. He couldn't put numbers to this, but, for once, he didn't need to. It would have been about as bad as it could get.

Alicia Gimpel didn't like December. The sun rose late and set early, and clouds and fog were so thick you mostly couldn't see it when it did sneak into the sky. It rained a lot of the time. When it didn't rain, sometimes it snowed. Some people said they liked having seasons-it made them enjoy spring and summer more. Alicia couldn't fathom that. She wished she lived somewhere like Italy, where it was warm and nice almost all year round.

The only thing December had going for it was Christmas. She liked the tree and its spicy smell and the ornaments and gifts. She liked the fat roast goose her mother cooked every year. She liked the break from school she got at Christmas and New Year's. And, of course, she liked the presents.

This year, though, she looked at Christmas in a new way. Up till now, it had always beenher holiday. If she was a Jew, though, it was someone else's holiday. Her family would still do the same things: she was sure of that. They would have to; if they didn't, people would wonder why not. But what they did wouldn't feel the same.

Then something else occurred to her. Jews had their own New Year's Day. They had other holidays of their own, too. She remembered Purim, when she'd found out she was a Jew. She asked her mother, "Do we have a holiday of our own that's like Christmas?"

Lise Gimpel was frying potato pancakes fragrant with onion in a big pan of hot oil. "Where are your sisters?" was the first thing she asked.

"They're upstairs," Alicia answered.

Her mother looked around to make sure Alicia was right. Then she answered. "We have a holiday at this time of year. It's called Chanukah." She told of Antiochus' war against the Jews more than 2,100 years before, and of the oil that burned for eight days instead of just one.

Alicia listened, entranced. Then, as was her way, she started thinking about what she'd heard. "The Persians wanted to get rid of us," she said. Her mother nodded. "And these Syrians or Greeks or whatever they were wanted to get rid of us." Mommy nodded again. Alicia went on, "And the Nazis wanted to get rid of us, too."

"You know that's true," her mother said. "They still do. Never forget it."

"I won't. I can't," Alicia said. "But what did we ever do to make so many people want to wipe us out?"

"I don't think we ever tried to do anything," her mother replied. "We just tried to live our own lives our own way."

"There has to be more than that," Alicia insisted. Her mother shook her head. She asked, "Well, why is it just us, then?"

"It's notjust us," her mother answered. "The Turks did it to the Armenians; the Germans did it to the gypsies, too; the Americans did it to their blacks. I think it's happened to us so much because we're stubborn about being what we are. We didn't want to worship Antiochus' gods. We had our own God. We didn't think Jesus was anything special. People made us pay for that, too. We want to do what we do, that's all-do it and not be bothered. We don't bother anybody else."

"It seems like…an awful lot of trouble," Alicia said hesitantly.

"Well, yes." Her mother managed a smile. "But we think it's what God wants us to do, too, you know."

"I suppose so." Alicia frowned. "How do we know that's what God wants us to do, though?"

"I didn't say we knew. I said we thought so." Her mother sighed. "I could tell you that's what the Bible says, but if you look through the Bible and pick out this and that, you can make it say anything under the sun. So I'll just say this is what we've thought for all these years, all these generations, ever since before the Maccabees, before Esther and Mordechai. It's a long, long chain of people. The Nazis almost broke it, but they didn't quite. Do you want to let them?"

"No," Alicia said, "not when you put it like that." She had a child's conservatism: things that were should keep on going. And she also had her own strong sense of order, one much like her father's.

"When all you girls find out what you are, we'll be able to do a little more for Chanukah," her mother said. "You'll all get some Chanukahgelt for the eight nights. You're supposed to light candles, too: one the first night, two the second, and so on up to eight. I don't know if we'll ever be able to try that, though. If anybody caught us, it would be the end."

Hiding. Doing what you could. Remembering what you were supposed to do but couldn't. Maybe one day your descendants would be able to. If they ever could, those were things they would need to know. A long, long chain of people. That was what Alicia's mother had said. Suddenly, Alicia realized she wasn't the last link on the chain. Others would come after her. One day, in the far, far future, there would be as many ahead of her as behind her-if the chain didn't break here.

"I understand," she whispered. "I really do."

"Good." Her mother flipped potato pancakes with an iron spatula. "We make these at Chanukah, too. That's not part of the religion. It's just part of the celebration. And the nice thing is, it's safe, because people make potato pancakes all the time. Nobody particularly notices if you do."

"Nobody particularly notices if you do what?" Francesca asked from the doorway.

Alicia jumped. Her heart leaped into her throat. How much had her little sister overheard? Enough to send her running to the Security Police because she didn't know what was what? Maybe not, or she wouldn't have asked that particular question. She must have got there just before she spoke up.

Mommy never turned a hair. "Nobody particularly notices if you give somebody a potato pancake before supper," she said, and scooped out three-one for Alicia, one for Francesca, and one for Roxane. "Be careful with them. They're hot. And Francesca, go get your little sister, so she can have one, too. Yours will cool off in the meantime."

Away Francesca ran. Alicia shared a secret smile with her mother. They knew something the smaller girls didn't. And it would stay a secret for a while, and then get told. And the chain would go on.